


reason and love keep little company

by thelilacfield



Series: there is no world where i am not yours [16]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Forbidden Love, Language of Flowers, language of fans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27914227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelilacfield/pseuds/thelilacfield
Summary: She’s surrounded by rich men, men who could give her everything she could ever want, set her up comfortably in a manor to carry their children. Men she doesn’t want.She could never love them half as much as she loves a poor gardener with the sky in his eyes and dirt beneath his nails.
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Series: there is no world where i am not yours [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859725
Comments: 3
Kudos: 48





	reason and love keep little company

**A/N:** AU-dvent day 6! A long unfinished fic that also goes with the 19th century prompt from AU-gust! (I promise we're getting to non-AUgust fics soon!)

I'm on Tumblr and Twitter **@mximoffromanoff** if anybody wants to chat about all things scarletvision! Enjoy, and please let me know with a comment if you do :)

* * *

Sun streams through the windows to speckle the scratched wood floors, and Wanda straightens up away from Victor's lips with a long sigh. "I have to go," she says softly, and he groans and wraps his arm tighter around her, pulling her back down into a kiss.

"Don't leave," he breathes against her mouth, his warmth beneath her, her hands straying to trace over the planes of his chest. "Stay with me."

"I have to," she says, forcing herself away from him to find her clothes. He sits up in bed, the sheets falling around his waist, hair in his eyes, and she has to drag her gaze away to slide into her abandoned dress, pinning her hair back up to hide the wave that's come in with his hands running through it. "This gathering is starting in an hour and Tony will be wondering where I am."

"But you could just hide away," he says softly, and she looks at him to find his gaze resting so tenderly on her. "We could spend the day here. No one would ever know."

"If the daughter of the house who this party is being thrown for doesn't appear, questions will be asked," she says, and Victor stands up, tugging the sheet around his hips and moving to curve a hand over the small of her back, kissing her shoulder. "I have to, Victor. I have to at least try to play the charming eligible young lady."

"Eligible?" he asks, his lips pressing to her neck, and she reaches to link their fingers together around her waist, clinging to him.

"I play the part," she whispers, leaning her weight back into him when he kisses her neck, mouth moving up to beneath her ear. "As long as this is a secret..."

"Why must it be a secret?" he asks, and she clutches his hand. He pulls away from her neck, and his eyes find hers in the fingerprint-shadowed mirror, his fingers sliding away from hers. "Why can't we tell the world?"

"I...there's more I need to understand," she says, and she sees the frustration in his eyes, and he turns away from her, pulling his rough work shirt over his head. "Victor? Sweetheart?"

"What is there to understand?" The sheet falls as he steps into his trousers, pulling them up around his waist and belting them closed, and she turns away from her own sex-flushed face to look at him, the way he runs his hands through his hair and avoids her gaze. "I love you, Wanda."

"And I love you," she says, pushing every ounce of sincerity she can into those words, making sure he understands and knows how she feels. How real this is.

"Then why can't we just be together?" His gaze finds hers, bright and hopeful, and she has to fight not to let her face fall. "If I love you, and you love me, what's holding us back?"

"People would talk-"

"And you care about your reputation over me?" He doesn't ask it angrily - that breaks her heart most of all. There's no flash of fury in his eyes. He just looks resigned, and it kills her that he thinks that what they have is temporary.

"No!" She catches his arm before he can turn away from her, spins him to face her and lifts a hand to cup his cheek, pushing a lock of hair out of his face. "I love you, Victor. But I...I owe a lot to Tony and Pepper. If word got out that their ward was sleeping with their gardener...I couldn't bear the consequences that would befall them."

"But if neither of us was born high class why does it matter-"

"I can't ruin their reputations after they took me in and let me grow into a better life than I would ever have had in Sokovia," she says, and his face falls. She presses her other hand to his cheek, cradling his face. "I love you. I just...I have to please them. Meet their friends' sons and when I don't like any of them I can suggest that I don't stay with them." She waits for his eyes to meet hers, a sheen of tears veiling the blue, and says, "You are all I want."

"Darling-"

"I have to go." She rises onto her tiptoes to kiss him, fingers curled into the thick hair at the back of his head, and her heart sings when he kisses her back, so tenderly, hand at the small of her back cradling her. Leaning their foreheads together when they have to pull away, she breathes, "Think of me."

"I will," he promises, catching her hand as she lowers it from his cheek and pressing a lingering kiss to her knuckles. It flusters her, and she's glad for the heat of the day to blame her pink cheeks on when she gets back to the manor, letting herself in through the ivy-covered back door and creeping up to her room. Nothing is disturbed, and she's sure that no one has been in her room, that Tony and Pepper still don't know that she's waiting until the rise of the moon to sneak out and stay nights in Victor's tiny tumbledown cottage.

When Pepper comes up to find her, she's lying on her bed reading, and hears her adoptive guardian sigh. "I hoped you were so long alone up here because you were deciding on your dress," she says, and Wanda sits upright, marking the place in her book and pulling the pins from her hair, knowing what comes next. "Let me help you."

"Is Morgan napping?" Wanda asks, and Pepper nods, moving across the room with hairbrush in hand. Wanda might be of marrying age, too old to need a mother, but she lived without one between the ages of eight and fourteen. Even at twenty-one, it's wonderful to have gentle fingers combing through her hair, someone else's hands pressing pins into an intricate style. "Is she coming to the party?"

"She'll likely want to pick over the food," Pepper says, and Wanda smiles at the thought of her irrepressible sister. Or at least, the child she thinks of as her sister. For so long she was a child who lost her brother, and now to be an adult with a sister is a return to who she never thought she'd be again. "I have to attempt to wrestle her into a suitable dress."

"Isn't that what you must do with me?" Wanda teases, and Pepper smiles slightly, twisting a last strand of hair into perfect place. "What dress will you have me wear?"

"Oh, I think you should be allowed to choose," Pepper says, tucking hair behind her ear, the navy of her dress going so well with the red curls. "This is, after all, a party for you. These men are here to see you."

"I wish to God they weren't," Wanda says under her breath as she moves towards her wardrobe, flicking through the gowns. She pauses affectionately over the simple grey dress she was wearing the day Victor came to work at the manor, the day she caught sight of that blonde hair and those blue eyes and he took her breath away. The deep green she wore the day he gave her the first flower, a gardenia blossom that he later explained was to tell her she was lovely when he was too shy to say it. A helpless smile pulls at the corners of her mouth when she finds the plain navy dress she wore the day he first kissed her, the day she tore the sleeve slightly tugging it off to lay him down in the gardens and make love to him.

She chooses a deep red dress, her favourite colour, and lets Pepper lace her into her corset and adjust the bustle of the dress. It pulls tight to her waist and across her chest, and she dreamily thinks of keeping this dress on to go visit Victor tonight. Of seeing his lovely eyes blow wide and the flush dance across his cheeks, the way he would pull her close and gaze at her like she's a painting by one of the Old Masters. The way he would kiss her.

As the afternoon reaches its highest heat, Tony is welcoming his friends to the manor, Morgan hanging onto his hand looking particularly adorable in her frilled white dress. Knowing she's the main attraction, Wanda sets herself up in the living room, elegantly cross-legged in an armchair near the window. Where she can see Victor trimming the hedges, his work shirt off in the blistering heat, and she can watch him from afar, the slender length of him, the way he flicks his hair out of his eyes every few moments. Willing him to look up and catch her eye.

Just as he taught her the language of flowers for something they could use to communicate in secret, she taught him the language of fans. Something she learned from books and from watching other women her age communicating with unsuitable young men across crowded theatres. With the room filled with families, and all the men standing in clumps while darting glances her way and nudging each other, she finds Vision looking at her through the window and smiles softly. Quickening her fanning as she watches him. _I love you so much_. A touch of the open fan while she waves to him behind its shield. _I long to be near you_.

She can see him smiling, and continues to flutter her fan in a quick series of messages, with no eyes on her. To reassure him while she's surrounded by these rich men, men who could give her everything she could ever want, set her up comfortably in a manor to carry their children. Men she doesn't want, because she could never love them half as much as she loves a poor gardener with the sky in his eyes and dirt beneath his nails.

 _You have won my love. I love you painfully. You may kiss me. I promise to marry you. I love you. I long to be near you. I love you. I long to be near you. I love you. I long to be near you._ He's beaming bright enough to rival the sun, and she knows that when night falls again she can go to him as the shadows lengthen, that his long fingers will pull the pins from her hair and curve around her corseted waist, that she'll find the same comfort and love and desire in his arms that she's found for the last year, since the first kiss that came out of nowhere.

"If you long to be near me, all you have to do is come to me." She looks up at the voice, into the eyes of one of the young men. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, broad-shoulder, and bearing a smile edged with a little too much transparent charm for her taste. She can't look at men's smiles anymore without comparing them to the genuine sweetness of Victor's, the breath of fresh air he brings to her day simply by looking at her.

"I would never want a man too cowardly or too arrogant to make the first move," she says sharply. She can feel Pepper hopefully looking at her, hoping she'll find the right man, and straightens in the armchair, feigning interest.

"Lucky for you, Ms. Maximoff, that I am neither cowardly nor arrogant," the man says, and she arches an eyebrow. "My name is Steve Rogers. My family is in medicine, research to help unfortunate people."

"I've heard of your father," she says, understanding why this young man is here. Tony is close friends with Joseph Rogers, donating money to his research when he can, and she should probably play nicer with his son. "So you got the invite through your family?"

"And I knew a woman as exquisite as you would be here," he says, and she barely refrains from rolling her eyes. She can't abide such self-assured charm in a man, she was so drawn to Victor because he seemed so unaware of his looks. He never knew that she burned with jealousy when she saw the young daughters of one of Tony's business associates admiring him and giggling, that his shyness made him so much more attractive, that she ached for his touch every night.

"How charming of you," she says, hoping to communicate her utter lack of interest. None of the men catch her eye, when she's in love with someone else. When she's twirling her fan to communicate that to anyone looking at her who might happen to understand that she loves another, and she glances out of the window and sees him diligently pulling up weeds.

"Ms. Maximoff...may I call you Wanda?" Steve must interpret her silence as a yes, because he proceeds to, "Wanda, if I may, I am the only man who has come to speak to you this entire circus. May I take you out?"

"Perhaps," she says, and Steve smirks. He probably thinks she's playing coy, allowing him to enjoy the chase - but she has absolutely no intention of following through on any promise. She's distracted watching Victor reach for his tossed aside shirt, pulling it down over the scar on his chest she can't see from this far away but knows is there.

The door swings open and he's there, haloed by sunlight, and Tony is crossing the room when Victor calls a polite, "Mr. Stark?" Wanda is smiling softly, and when Victor looks at her she speeds up her fanning again. _I love you so much_. She sees his eyes light up, sees the stain of pink spread across his cheekbones, and smiles to herself.

Something in Tony's eyes perks up when he notices Wanda talking to Steve, and she remembers what this gathering is for. She remembers that she is supposed to at least try to get along with one of these men, that Tony is hopeful for seeing her married off. That she can't wreck her adopted father's reputation by allowing anyone the opportunity to realise her secret affair with a servant.

And when Steve Rogers looks at her, all the self-assurance of the man who has grown up sure of hid place in the world in his eyes, and repeats, "Ms. Maximoff, may I take you out?" she nods. And he's grinning, his eyes slanting back to the knot of other rich young men who came here hoping for her attention. "The theatre, shall we say? This weekend?"

"I'd be honoured," she says, the thing she's sure she's supposed to say. And the smile on his jarringly handsome face seems to say that she's spoken true.

She looks across the room at Victor, engaged in a quiet conversation with Tony about trimming back the rose bushes that are flourishing so vibrantly in the long wave of heat. And she wishes fervently that she could cross the room and take his arms around her in front of all these people. She wishes that she didn't have to hide him.

He deserves to be loved openly and proudly. And it digs a poisoned barb into her heart that she can't be the one to love him like that.

* * *

She supposes Steve Rogers is charming enough. Tony was delighted that she was being taken out by Joseph Rogers' son, and Pepper spent an inordinate amount of time preening her for the date, making sure that her lovely blue dress was fitted perfectly to her, that her hair was braided neatly. Other women in the theatre are casting her envious looks, and she holds her fan tightly, the thin handle seeming about to snap in her anxious grip.

Her mind is too tangled to enjoy the comedy on the stage, so far away from the domed ceiling of the theatre that she starts whenever a wave of laughter carries over the well-dressed audience. She's thinking of Victor, wondering what he's doing. He seemed so resigned when she told him she was stepping out with a rich boy, even though he told her he believed every one of her reassurances that she wasn't doing it for love. Maybe if she was a braver person she'd be running from the theatre, back to Stark Manor, back to the tumbledown cottage and his arms. A brave woman would damn the consequences of rejecting the rich men for the poor one, and be with the only man who could ever make her feel the way Victor does.

"Would you like to prolong the evening, Wanda?" Steve asks when the play ends, when she has clapped her hands raw for the beaming actors who spelled out a story she already can't remember. He's smiling, charming and confident, and she just nods wordlessly.

They walk through the park beneath the milky twilight, and he reaches for her hand, his fingers tangling through hers. It feels so indefinably wrong to let a man who isn't Victor touch her, to walk at his side, and her fan hangs heavy and closed in her hand. A sad statement in the language of the fans that she's sure this rich man won't understand, a mournful _I want to be engaged_. But it's not to this man, not to any man who could offer her evenings at the theatre and moonlit walks. There's an entirely different future she dreams of.

"You know, Ms. Maximoff, I am truly honoured that you came out with me tonight," Steve says, and she nods stiffly. His eyes cast to her fan, and he smirks. "And if you want to be engaged so badly, I'm sure there will be no objection from my father or Mr. Stark."

"You understand the language of the fan?" she asks, and he nods, smiling. "Oh, I...I'm only learning. I didn't mean to communicate that I...I wish to be engaged. I would never want you to think I'm...overeager, or I'm trying to trap you."

"Oh, Ms. Maximoff, plenty of women are overeager to be wed to a doctor's son," he says, and there's something dark in his tone, something that sets her teeth on edge. "In fact, you may be the only woman in England who tries to push me away."

"I...I only want...I don't wish to trap you," she repeats, and it sounds pathetic even to her own ears. Lord knows how she's kept her affair with Victor a secret for a year when she has so little talent for lying. "It has been such a lovely evening. Perhaps we should end here."

"The night is still young, Wanda, there is no need to rush home," he says, and something about the sound of her name in his mouth is wrong. It isn't soft or reverent, nothing like the way Victor speaks her name, the way it sings through her. "Unless you have an illicit appointment to keep with that gardener."

She reels away from him, her mind whiting out in horror, and she can only stammer out, " _What_? I-I...you are sorely mistaken, Mr. Rogers-"

"You are not new to the language of the fan, are you, Ms. Maximoff?" he asks, and he still sounds so light. He is _threatening_ her, ready to blow her life apart, and yet he smiles on, the charm of a knife's edge. "I saw you at that party. Telling a _servant_ in your father's household that you promise to marry him."

"He's not my father," she snaps, and regrets the show of emotion when Steve smiles like a shark. "I...I only mean that I'm his ward. Morgan is his true-born daughter. He only took me in because my parents passed away in an accident."

"And wouldn't it be revenge on his mistakes for you to ruin his reputation by falling in love with his gardener?" Steve says, and she stares into the middle distance behind his shoulder, trying not to cry. This cannot be happening, she refuses to allow it. "Don't be a fool, Wanda. I could offer you so much more than a man who spends his days dirtying his hands in flower beds-"

"I would never marry you because you threaten me," she says sharply. "I love another, you have seen that. There are a hundred other women eager for your hand."

"Ah, but none are Anthony Stark's ward," he says, smiling icily. "So you have a choice, Wanda. I'm sure the police would be interested to hear that a daughter of an industry king has been assaulted repeatedly by a servant of the household."

"No, he...he would _never_!" she exclaims in horror, tears prickling her eyes. "He... _I_ was the one to start it. He has...he has done nothing but respect me since the day he came to the manor. I _love_ him."

"And who will the police believe?" Steve asks, and the full scale of his threats comes crashing down on her all at once, crushing the breath from her lungs. "The concerned son of a doctor? Or the hysterical foreign ward of a rich man?"

"You...you can't do this," she says, and he just grins.

"I am allowing you a month to make your choice," he says. "Or the police are going to hear of your paramour's crimes. Oh, just imagine how heartbroken Tony will be to realise he brought a man into his manor who has so grievously hurt his beloved ward." Then, like clouds blowing aside to reveal the sun, the shadows leave the hollows of his face and he holds out an arm. "Allow me to escort you home, Wanda. You've had a terrible shock."

The carriage leaves her at the boundary of Stark Manor, all the windows black. And she runs across the grounds in her fancy dress to the door of Victor's cottage, slamming the flats of her palms against the door until her skin is raw. And when he opens the door, soft with sleep, the neckline of his shirt low enough to expose the hollow of his throat where the press of her lips has drawn whispers of her name, something in her breaks.

All of his sleepy confusion blows away when the tears burst down her cheeks, hot on her skin, and he's pulling her into his arms, closing the door behind them, his gentle hands trying to brush the tears away faster than they fall. "What happened, Wanda?" he asks, and she shakes her hand, the words trapped fast beneath her sobs. "Did he...did he do something to you? Please, I don't care, it wasn't your fault, just tell me."

"He knows about us," she sobs, and his eyes blow wide. "He...he saw us talking secretly at the party. He must have learned the language of fans from some other girl he went out with, so he knows...he knows about my promises."

"Wanda...Wanda, darling, please don't cry, please," he pleads, and she leans into him, his familiar warmth and sweet, outdoorsy scent. Her sobs gradually fade into the occasional high-pitched hiccup, and she breathes out into him, her weight all leaned into him. "Did he shame you for being with me? I knew this would happen-"

"No," she says, and lifts her head to find his eyes. "He wants to marry me. He's given me a month to decide whether I will."

"Oh." The single syllable carries the weight of so much hurt, Victor's handsome face falling in doubt and ruin, and it breaks her heart all over again. "And...what are you going to say?"

"He...he's giving me no choice," she says, and something in Victor's gaze sharpens. "If I say no, he says he'll...he'll go to the police. He'll tell them about us and say...say _terrible_ things. He'll say that...everything between us, it was because...because you _assaulted_ me." Grief quickens her emotions, and her voice is tremulous when she says, "And they'll believe him. Because he's the honourable son of a doctor, and I'm just a foreign girl no matter who took me in as a ward, and you're a _gardener_. He's going to tear us apart."

Victor holds her for a long moment of silence. Then he quietly says, "I love you, Wanda. And if that love carries punishment with it, then I will take it-"

"No!" she insists, looking up at his resignation, his terrible martyr complex. "I won't let you. I...I'll marry him. And we can carry on as we are. I don't care, I love you, and I want to be with you."

"If he found out you were unfaithful, we have no way of knowing what he could do," Victor says, and she's almost hysterical. "I think it is better for both of our futures to end this." He lifts her hand to his lips and kisses her fingertips, and his voice is soft when he says, "Loving you has been the greatest happiness of my life. To have even a year of you is better than a life without."

"Victor, _no_ ," she insists. "You are all I want. Let's just...run away. Leave all of this behind. I love you."

"Oh, Wanda, darling, I love you too," he says, and kisses her in a way that feels tinged with finality. "I can't be the one to ruin you."

And he closes the door behind her. Leaving her sobbing in the cold night air.

* * *

She's miserable. Wilting like summer flowers in the first autumn rainfall, the early snap of cold. She can barely lift her head to engage in any of her usual pursuits, forever searching the gardens for the glimpses of golden hair. Even though looking at Victor leaves her broken, she can't turn her eyes away from him. The days count down to the end of the month, to the answer Steve will come to her for, and she tries to figure out how to find a path that will make everyone happy. That won't end with her married to a man she can't love, that won't end with Victor arrested for something he didn't do and sent to Australia on one of those notorious ships, that won't end with her destroying her family's reputation.

Tony approaches her on the final day before Steve will come back to her, and sits down next to her, his face a mask of sympathy. "Why have you been so miserable this past month?" he asks, and she turns her face away. "Wanda, you can tell me. For all intents and purposes, we're family."

"I can't," she says quietly, and Tony's hand is on her shoulder, a reassuring squeeze.

"I can't have a miserable ward and a miserable gardener in the same house," he says, and her heart leaps at the mention of Victor. "I'm going to miss him, you know."

"Miss him?"

"He handed in a letter of resignation today," Tony says with a shrug, and the bottom falls out of her stomach. "Thanked me for everything I've done, but says it's time for him to move on. I've recommended him to the Romanoffs, I'm sure they need a better gardener. Their grass is always yellowing."

"He's _leaving_?" she gasps, and there's a smirk unfurling at the corners of Tony's mouth. "But he...he _can't_."

"Perhaps you should give him a reason to stay," he says, a teasing lilt to his voice, and she turns a round-eyed gaze on him. "Oh, don't act so surprised. Morgan is four years old, and even she understood what was happening between you and Victor. You are not skilled at keeping secrets, Wanda." He inspects her face and asks, "What caused this argument that's left you both miserable and me bereft of a skilled gardener?"

"I can't tell you," she says. "It...it's too awful."

"God in Heaven, you're not pregnant, are you?" he asks, and she's so shocked it pulls a laugh from her. "I will take that as a no. What happened?"

"I...when Steve Rogers took me out, he asked me to marry him," she says, and joy blooms across Tony's face. "But he...he threatened me. He let me know that he knew about Victor and I. And he said...if I told him no, he would go to the police. And he would tell them that our affair was...a matter of assault."

Tony's face darkens, and he shakes his head. "I will have to speak to Joseph about how his son is treating my daughter," he says, and Wanda is staring at him in utter shock. "Wanda, who in blazes cares if you marry a doctor's son? He doesn't make you happy, and I won't ask you to marry someone you don't love. I would never do that to my children."

"But-" She cuts herself, blinking at him. "Aren't you angry with me? For risking your reputation?"

"Oh, I've done enough of that myself over the years," he says with an airy wave of his hand. "You know...Pepper was actually meant to marry the Hammer boy. But I came sweeping in, and obviously she fell in love with me. It was quite the scandal back in the day." He smiles at her, the affection of a father and says, "Darling girl, there is no force in the world that can control who we fall in love with. If you love Victor as much as you appear to, I will do everything I can to allow the two of you to make a life together."

"What about Steve-"

"Give me a day and ten minutes alone with his father," Tony says. "We'll surely quell him." He glances out of the window, down to the trees that hide Victor's cottage, and says, "Go to him. Tell him the news."

She stumbles out of the manor in a haze, tripping across the damp grass to Victor's cottage. Autumn is gripping the manor, everything turning to burnished reds and golds, rain falling in a fine mist that cools her flushed skin, and she knocks on his door full of hope. When he opens it, it's with a flash of familiar happiness in his eyes that's quickly belied by his polite, "Ms. Maximoff, what can I do for you?"

"Marry me," she gasps, and his eyes go wide, that beautiful blue that means she won't miss the summer sky over the bleakness of winter. "Victor, please. I love you."

"But-"

"Tony knew about us, all this time," she says. "He doesn't _care_ , Victor! He knows just how it feels to love someone so deeply you can't control it. And I love _you_ ardently. I need you. I've been so miserable since you tried to sacrifice this."

"I...Wanda, I'm not worthy of you-"

"You _are_ ," she insists, fierce and quiet and sure. "I love you. I've loved you since the day you came here, golden and perfect. I don't care for anything that might keep us apart. Tony will do anything to allow us our life together."

"What about Mr. Rogers-"

"Tony is having words with his father," Wanda says, not without a smirk of satisfaction curling onto her lips. "Victor, please. Marry me. Be my husband. Love me for the rest of our lives."

He stares at her. Then he turns away, and when he returns to meet her eyes there's an ivy flower in his hand that he holds out to her, his eyes brightening with every passing moment. She curls her fingers around the soft edges of the leaf, touching the velvety edges of the white petals, and softly asks, "What does this mean?"

"It means friendship," he says, and her heart sinks. But he's smiling, his head bowing towards hers, his voice softening and slowing. "Affection. Fidelity."

"And?" she asks when he goes silent for too long, and he smiles.

"Wedded love," he breathes, and she _beams_.

"You'll marry me?" she asks, breathless and eager, and his arm wraps around her, his hand spreading wide over the small of her back.

"Yes," he whispers, and everything in her sings his name in delight. "Always, Wanda."

The flower sways gracefully to the floor when his mouth covers her.


End file.
